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Friedrich Engels On The Factory Act Of 1834

 

Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Oxford Univ. Press edition: 2009; pp. 180, 181)

 

ʻ[T]he Factory Act of 1834, which forbade the employment of children under 9 years of age (except in silk mills), limited the working hours of children between 9 and 13 years to forty-eight per week, or nine hours in any  one day at the utmost; that of young persons from 14 to 18 years of age to sixty-nine per week, or twelve on any one day as the maximum, provided for an hour and a half as the minimum interval for meals, and repeated the total prohibition of night-work for persons under 18 years of age.

Compulsory school attendance two hours daily was prescribed for all children under 14 years, and the manufacturer declared punishable in case of employing children without a certificate of age from the factory surgeon, and a certificate of school attendance from the teacher.

As recompense, the employer was permitted to withdraw one penny from the child's weekly earnings to pay the teacher.

Further, surgeons and inspectors were appointed to visit the factories at all times, take testimony of operatives on oath, and enforce the law by prosecution before a Justice of the Peace.ʼ

 

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